WHAT IS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SUSTAINABLE TOURISM AND PEACE?

Tourism for Tomorrow Newsletter June 2016 Share Launching a series on Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals

Last Year, the United Nations adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals. These goals and targets address a range of issues including poverty and hunger, health, education, sustainable cities, climate change, and protecting oceans and forests.

WORLD TRAVEL AND TOURISM COUNCIL published a report; Tourism as a Driver of Peace, which sets out to explore the links between tourism and peace. Delivered in partnership with Institute of Economics and Peace (IEP), the research concludes that “countries with a more open and sustainable tourism sector tend to be more peaceful.” According to the report, the clearest link between TOURISM and PEACE can be found in what it describes as “POSITIVE PEACE”, by which it means the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies. These are explained as: a sound business environment; good relations with neighbours; high levels of human capital; acceptance of the rights of others; low levels of corruption; a well-functioning government; free flow of information; and the equitable distribution of resources.

For tourism to support and promote peace, therefore, it needs to be seen by the communities in which it operates as being a positive, restorative player in society, as not walled off away from the communities in which it operates, but engaged in the provision of meaningful local employment, contributing to environmental regeneration and protecting the most vulnerable from its impacts.